SM-style gallery experience as a content block

thenickdude

Hi everyone,

When I went to Japan, I went on lots of trips where the day's shooting produced many photos all concentrated a certain topic (e.g. Yoshimine-dera temple, or the Sapporo Snow Festival), and these are a perfect fit to create a gallery each for.

But sometimes I only get 5-10 photos of one subject. In this case, it seems a waste to force people to navigate to my Japan index, decide on and click on a gallery based on one thumbnail, just to see those 5-10 photos. The viewer would then have to figure out how to navigate back and try again if they want to see a different subject.

One way of solving this problem is to create a page with a couple of Multiple Photos blocks set to thumbnails. This way, you can see many short subjects at a glance, and switching between them only requires scrolling which is fast and intuitive.

There's one more friction that I want to remove, though. When I observe people browsing my site (like my parents), I find that they would rather pick and choose which photos they see, instead of viewing all of them sequentially. This means that they have to repeatedly open and close the lightbox (which is extra slow because they don't use keyboard shortcuts to close it and must click the "X" which is a very small target).

SmugMug-style galleries allow viewers to rapidly pick new photos with a single click, by avoiding the Lightbox. If the Multiple Photos block supported a style similar to the SmugMug gallery, I could create a page with many Multiple Photos blocks, which cover many small subjects, and would be quick and easy to browse.

This is my idea of what it might look like:





And this is a live demo on my website that you can try out:

http://www.sherlockphotography.org/Japan/Various

msp

Hi Lamah,
This is very cool idea - I like very much how you have the thumbnails scroll left/right. Did you implement this scrolling using options available in the customizer? Or this is achieved with custom CSS only? Thank you very much.

thenickdude

This is currently implemented using a JavaScript customisation that cannot be installed on a regular SM site.

You could duplicate the scrolling thumbnails using pure CSS but it would be a lot of code... Maybe I'll give that a try anyway.

msp

Thank you Lamah. It looked like JavaScript behavior but I wasn't sure if it is in fact what I thought. May I ask how come you are able to use JavaScript on SM? Beta testing or approved customizer?

thenickdude

Super hacker.

msp

Haha:) I do not doubt your ability to be in this category:) I am sure you are better hacker than I. But seriously, can you tell? please? PM? I love the effect and just thinking of the amount of css I need to type for this makes me depressed:)

Thanks a bunch!

thenickdude

Unfortunately, given how thoroughly it violates SM's terms of service (like, every second line), I doubt I would be allowed to stay with SmugMug much longer if I began setting this up for other accounts too.

I'm currently working on a CSS generator that will create a widget like this on the page!

pbandj

I love the idea and the execution...and agree that this should be a feature request for Smugmug to implement. Not that we don't appreciate your efforts as well!

sarasphotos

OMG, this is EXACTLY how I'd like my galleries to appear - a look I've used tons of times using (gasp!) Flash or JavaScript. (i.e. Lightroom export for Web using SimpleGallery) I find it SOOOO much more attractive than any of the standard SmugMug styles.

Lamah, thank you for your hard work - I truly hope it becomes a usable feature!

Cheers,

Sara

Ben

Man, I love the initial layout on the page- extremely sexy. Collecting multiple galleries onto a single page makes a ton of sense.

Personally, I really dislike browsing photos in a filmstrip style. It is totally a matter of preference and taste. For my own galleries, I might prefer it to slide the thumbnails over to the left and group them in a traditional "SmugMug" style while open, leaving the rows of other galleries in place above and below the content block. I would have to play with it to be sure if that is an improvement for my own totally biased purposes.

In terms of usability, I found myself wanting to be able to collapse a gallery after I had browsed it (or changed my mind about browsing it). I know that opening a photo from a different gallery collapses the original one, but I wanted to go back and browse the whole page again.

Clever idea, nice work.

Baldy

Lamah wrote: »

Hi everyone,

When I went to Japan, I went on lots of trips where the day's shooting produced many photos all concentrated a certain topic (e.g. Yoshimine-dera temple, or the Sapporo Snow Festival), and these are a perfect fit to create a gallery each for.

But sometimes I only get 5-10 photos of one subject. In this case, it seems a waste to force people to navigate to my Japan index, decide on and click on a gallery based on one thumbnail, just to see those 5-10 photos. The viewer would then have to figure out how to navigate back and try again if they want to see a different subject.

One way of solving this problem is to create a page with a couple of Multiple Photos blocks set to thumbnails. This way, you can see many short subjects at a glance, and switching between them only requires scrolling which is fast and intuitive.

There's one more friction that I want to remove, though. When I observe people browsing my site (like my parents), I find that they would rather pick and choose which photos they see, instead of viewing all of them sequentially. This means that they have to repeatedly open and close the lightbox (which is extra slow because they don't use keyboard shortcuts to close it and must click the "X" which is a very small target).

SmugMug-style galleries allow viewers to rapidly pick new photos with a single click, by avoiding the Lightbox. If the Multiple Photos block supported a style similar to the SmugMug gallery, I could create a page with many Multiple Photos blocks, which cover many small subjects, and would be quick and easy to browse.

That's very fascinating, Lamah. Gotta think a lot about this.

ko04

Baldy wrote: »

That's very fascinating, Lamah. Gotta think a lot about this.

Nicholas IE Lamah the type of things your able to do with smugmug amazes me but then again I know nothing when it comes to java and the type of work you do. I mostly copy and paste haha. Though it looks like you got "Baldy's" attention so maybe this will be added. I think to have the option would be sweet whether or not I'd use I don't know but Its a great idea!